Hello from Annie

My week wasn’t nearly as interesting as Luke’s but I’ll update everyone on it anyway. On Monday Luke and I went to the Environmental Health office of the Department of Paraíso (part of the hospital where my counterpart works) and asked what kind of projects they do, if they need any volunteer help with health topics or engineering work. The employees are really nice and seemed very open to us working with them…they even offered us a desk in their office. We made plans to go to a community the next week (tomorrow – Tuesday the 29th) that has no potable water and is having lots of health problems due to no clean water. We’ll see what comes out of this or even if we make it to the community tomorrow. There always seems to be things getting in the way of plans.

On Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday I went to my counterpart’s office in the morning where I usually sit at the desk they have for me there and look through my manuals. I’ve started putting together a class for 5th and 6th graders that includes topics like self-esteem, good communication, values, sex ed, HIV/AIDS prevention, etc. I have a lot of materials dealing with these topics so I’ve been taking the best of each topic and putting it together to develop a class (really it’s just something to keep me busy when I’m at the office).

On Wednesday, while Luke was working in the mountains, I went to El Paraíso to visit the other health volunteer in the area and talk to her about what type of work she’s doing. I also accompanied her to an aldea about 20 minutes from El Paraíso on a dirt road to give a charla to 6th graders. I still need to blog sometime about the educational system here…it’s definitely something that needs some major improvement. The kids do a lot of copying from the board and very little critical thinking, group work, problem-solving, etc. For example, while we were giving our charla, we asked them to read a story in groups about a teenage girl who got pregnant with her boyfriend that she thought was in love with her. We then asked them to discuss as a group 3 questions that we put on the board. After giving them these instructions, they immediately started to copy down the discussion questions we had put on the board. Meanwhile one person in the group read aloud (very quietly) the story. None of the group members were listening because they were so concerned with writing everything down. A few of them even asked us if they needed to copy the story itself in their notebooks. I kept saying, you don’t need to write ANYTHING for this activity, I just want you to understand the story and talk about it. That was a concept they couldn’t quite understand.

On Thursday afternoon, my counterpart picked me up (with a driver) in a State of Honduras vehicle from the hospital and we drove out to an aldea about 25 minutes from Danlí (towards Paraíso then off a dirt road to the east). We went to talk to the director of the school to asked if I could come and give my charlas to the 5th and 6th graders. They seemed happy to have me start coming. I’m probably going to start going there once or twice a week starting in a week. The problem is the transportation…there are only a few buses that go to and from the aldea. So, like everything in Honduras, one hour of work actually takes twice, three, even four times as long due to things like transportation, chit-chatting, starting late, people not showing up, etc. So if I get there, give the 1-hour charla, and get back to Danlí safe and sound, I can call it a good day’s work. After we finished talking to the teachers, we stopped at a midwife’s house in the aldea, talked to her for a bit, had coffee and sweet bread, and then headed back to Danlí.
Saturday morning we took off for Tegus then onto San Lorenzo then onto Coyolito where we then took a lancha (small boat) to the island of Amapala in the Pacific. We had a great time hanging out with other volunteers, lounging on the beach, swimming in the ocean and eating seafood. Sunday morning a group got up early to hike up to the volcano on the island but Luke and I didn’t bring boots and didn’t feel like getting up at 5:30. The next time we visit the island, we’ll definitely hike it. The top of the volcano is usually covered in clouds and is about a 3-hour hike to the top. It felt very tropical on the island – humid and hot. The beaches are definitely not Caribbean beaches with the white sand and blue water but still, a beach is a beach. We left the island around 2 on Sunday afternoon. Luke and I stayed with a volunteer in San Lorenzo on Sunday night. San Lorenzo is an interesting little town on the coast with mangroves all around. Lots of seafood restaurants and a heat that is almost suffocating. We had breakfast this morning with the two volunteers there then headed to Tegus then back to Danlí. Check out the pics of the weekend below.

On the ¨lancha¨on the way to Amapala (you can see the volcano and island in the background).

Hanging out at the house we rented on the beach.Sunset over the Pacific.

The beach we stayed at. Only a few abandoned shacks, a restuarant and our house.